


Friend, Brother, Lover

by Lockadee



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Mind Control, Mind Meld, No Star Trek Knowledge Actually Required, Season/Series 06 Spoilers, Soul Bond, Star Trek AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 14:52:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15003212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockadee/pseuds/Lockadee
Summary: He says, “You’re my brother. I love you.”Shiro hearst’hy’la.---Friend. Brother. Lover. T’hy’la encompasses all three with an intimacy and nuance unmatched by any single concept. It does not translate into Standard.Keith is Romulan—he isHuman; he cannot possibly know what it is he implies: a bond beyond measure, forged not by the mind but by the soul.Shiro is Vulcan enough to know. And he is Human enough to want.





	Friend, Brother, Lover

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. Voltron can’t drop “You’re my brother. I love you” and _not_ expect me to immediately think of the OG space gays. Thus we have the new generation of space gays playing a song I’ve heard 5,000 times and still can’t get enough of.
> 
> I'm dedicating this one to [Alex](https://desperately-wants-to-see-you.tumblr.com/), who suggested the Romulan Keith headcanon and sent me on a deep dive into Trek research for the last four days. This is all her fault for enabling me rather than just letting me scream in the corner about t’hy’las like my original plan was. (Thanks, Alex <3)
> 
> Thanks to [cookie_club](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookie_club/pseuds/cookie_club) for beta-ing!
> 
> And another set of thanks for you, kind reader, for reading this sappy little fic. If you have any questions/comments/concerns/just want to chat, you can find me in the comments section or at [my Tumblr](https://lockadee.tumblr.com/). And if you'd like more from this AU, just let me know, and I'll at least post some expanded universe babble on my blog. I've finally figured out how to use it! ... Somewhat.

He says, “You’re my brother. I love you.”

Shiro hears _t’hy’la_.

The word is old, dating back to Vulcan antiquity; Shiro himself only bears its knowledge from spending long afternoons in his grandfather’s library, on days when the three suns of Vulcan had baked Shi’Kahr like kiln, leaving the city’s streets inhospitable to all but full-blooded Vulcans. He still recalls the scent of dust worn into the delicate pages of the few books that kept such ancient knowledge, books fragile enough to crumble beneath the weight of even the gentlest breath. Like the words they carried, they were among the last relics of the age his people had spent ruled by violent passions, where their poems were written in spilled copper blood on red sands. The time before logic and discipline supplanted emotion.

Friend. Brother. Lover. _T’hy’la_ encompasses all three with an intimacy and nuance unmatched by any single concept. It does not translate into Standard.

Keith is Romulan—he is _Human_ ; he cannot possibly know what it is he implies: a bond beyond measure, forged not by the mind but by the soul.

Shiro is Vulcan enough to know. And he is Human enough to want.

Despite the ineffable pressure on his mind telling him to strike a killing blow _now_ , he pauses, hand on Keith’s heart, blade at Keith’s throat. Death is not requisite for breaking him. Killing him without first tasting his mind could squander a rare and precious resource; it would be illogical.

Keith’s hummingbird heartbeat batters at Shiro’s palm. The grind of Keith’s blade against his cybernetic Borg arm sends sparks skittering through the air, burning tiny holes in the high collar of Keith’s yellow Starfleet uniform. And regardless of the lethal circumstances, Keith’s expression is soft with emotion, his eyes glassy and wet.

Shiro _wants_.

“Just let go, Keith. You don’t have to fight anymore,” he chants, slow and rhythmic, at odds with the quick twist that he uses to disarm Keith and pin his wrists. Those glassy eyes flare wide, and warm, stuttering puffs of air brush across Shiro’s face.

“Captain— _Shiro_.”

Shiro digs the fingertips of his flesh hand to Keith’s psi-points and murmurs, "My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts."

He pushes into Keith’s mind.

Fear pierces through him, frigid and sharp as an icicle, harsher than Keith’s lost sword. It takes Shiro a moment to untangle the feelings and remember that they are not his own. _He_ is not in distress. Keith’s anger, his confusion, his _fear—_ all palpable here, in the sprawling starscape of his mind, but Shiro is in control.

It’s beautiful.

Pinpricks of light harbor Keith’s every thought. Every secret, every shame, every fantasy, Shiro can pluck them all from the sky and turn them over in his hands, can swallow the stars and snatch those parts of Keith for himself. Feel them burn inside his chest. Their dynamism is entrancing. The power is intoxicating.

When Shiro laughs, it rings bright and bitter in the cavernous void. He’s never initiated a mind meld before. With the weakness of his Vulcan blood, he was not certain that he _could_ link his mind to another’s, despite how vigilant he’s been about his touch telepathy. How careful he’s been to not intrude on anyone’s—Keith’s—mind with so much as a hand on his shoulder.

All this time and he could have had _this_.

What a waste.

He reaches for the glut of stars.

Lightning cracks before his fingers. Thunder knocks him from his feet. Suddenly, Keith looms over him like a parody of their physical forms.

“Shiro?” he asks, wide eyes reflecting the brilliant night. “Where are we?”

Shiro considers the question, searching for an answer that is neither a falsehood, nor truer than he wishes to reveal. His hesitation must give his intent away; Keith’s eyes narrow and he conjures a shadow-dark sword. _Romulans_. Always so quick to violence.

“You were trying to kill me,” Keith accuses, though curiously, he leaves his sword hanging down at his side rather than leveled at Shiro’s neck. “You were—This—” He steps back and his tense jaw slackens; his breathing pattern loses its usual, smooth cadence. “This is a _meld_.”

“So it is,” Shiro admits.

Keith analyzes their surroundings with new eyes, reconciling the starry plane with the freshly gleaned information. He never pulls his gaze far from Shiro.

Instead, focusing on something just beyond Shiro’s shoulder, he asks, “Why do you have two shadows?”

“What?”

Keith’s face scrunches and he draws his free hand towards his temple. “There are… two presences…”

Shiro curses himself for his naivety and lack of mental shielding. For forgetting that Keith is a rare Romulan empath and can potentially exploit any flaws in his discipline. Melds are a _sharing_ of minds. He was a fool to think that Keith wouldn’t notice—that Keith wouldn’t notice… what?

“My—My _head_ ,” he groans as that strange pressure bears down on him again, crushing him like a gravitational singularity. _He should have just killed Keith earlier_.

Gentle hands cup his face, and steady, quiet confidence leaks through the touch. Shiro had thought that with the freedom to inspect Keith’s mind at leisure, he could not be closer to him, that he could take whatever he needed from Keith whenever he needed it. But he could not possibly have known just how much Keith had to _give_. Nor could he have anticipated Keith’s willingness to do so, his hands and eyes holding Shiro fast in a storm even as his emotions—his concern, his resolve, his _hope_ —ballast Shiro’s quaking heart.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, but I know we can fix this. Let me help you.”

“Keith…” Shiro wants to reach out, to know and be known in turn, but his limbs feel so heavy, pinned by both the pressure and by Keith’s force of will.

It’s for the best. Even as his fingers twitch, Shiro can’t be certain whether they would caress Keith or choke him.

“Shiro, I know you’re in here. It’s going to be okay. I will find you.” Keith slides one hand from his face, to his chest, over his side where his heart is beating double time, and tangles it with Shiro’s own. Shiro shudders, heat curling up his spine. The other hand is left on his face, half cradling, half a mimicry of a melding position.

Keith presses their foreheads together, and the sky goes supernova.

 

_Keith sits alone in the dirt, far enough away from the shipyard to not get yelled at but close enough to still see the starships. They’re building a new one, Leo-class, good for space exploration and can hold its own in a fight. A man is walking towards him and—_

_Fog rolls in off the San Francisco Bay; the same man stands next to him. Though for now Keith’s a speck of cosmic dust spinning on a single rock in the vast wonders of space, soon he will take to the sky. Their ship launches next month. They’ll finally stay together as long as—_

_The man is bloody and beaten but alive. He never would have been captured if Keith had done his job properly. Sitting in a hard sickbay chair, Keith lifts a trembling hand and reaches for him. He has to get better. Keith has to believe—_

_He won’t strike the finishing blow. Ever since this fight started, Keith has had his back against the wall, but the man has not killed him. Something odd is going on. This man is no stranger but neither is he Keith’s brother-in-arms. Even sprawled on his back with a sword at his neck, Keith cannot give up. Not on this fight and not on Shiro. He will_ never _give up on Shiro because—_

_“You’re my brother. I love you.”_

 

Between the starry sky above them and a sea of galaxies now mirrored beneath their entwined fingers, a new bond shimmers into existence, golden as a sunrise. One that will link them together until all of the stars go out. Shiro marvels at the bond, shamed by his own arrogance in instigating the meld but humbled by the depth of Keith’s regard. A love so undeniable that it whited out all thoughts and burned all shadows away. At least for now.

“T’hy’la,” Keith whispers. A word he cannot possibly know but whose meaning he has carried in his heart all this time. A word that Shiro does know but had never dared hope to apply to Keith. A word that _they_ now know. “I will find you.”

Shiro squeezes Keith’s hand tighter and basks the warmth of their bond.

“Parted from me and never parted, never and always touching and touched. I await thee,” he promises.


End file.
